Some big things are afoot in Europe. It seems likely that France will vote this week to reject the EU constitution. If they do vote to reject, the constitution will not be able to be implemented, causing a serious issue for the 25-member European Union. Bloomberg’s been covering this because of the potential effect on the Euro exchange rate, but other than that I haven’t found much US coverage.
Predictions that a ‘no’ vote from France will “kill” the EU may be premature, but it’s a real possibility. It all depends on whether there’s a willingness to do further work on the EU constitution. Getting 25 different countries to agree on anything is really, really, hard, so going back to the drawing table could mean years of additional negotiations and voting. Not an appealing prospect.
From what I’ve been able to glean in the English-language press, the anti-constitution opposition feels that
the charter enshrines an “ultra-liberal” economic model, putting market interests ahead of social concerns and does not protect workers enough.
Amazing. They’ll vote the EU constitution down because it doesn’t protect workers enough. I’m not sure if I’m impressed or annoyed, or both, by this. I’m impressed that the people of France feel so strongly about the issue that they’re willing to bring the whole EU-nification process to a halt over it. Annoyed because I think the EU is generally a good idea and that the French acting to derail the process is short-sighted of them.
And a minor side-note, note the use of the word ‘liberal’ as being pro-business, not pro-worker, in the Reuters UK piece. No matter what side of the Pond you live on, ‘liberal’ seems to be a bad word.